ARGIROPULO, GIOVANNI. – Byzantine humanist, born in Constantinople around 1415, died in Rome on 26 June 1487; he was one of the principal architects of the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth century. According to the historian Dukas (Historia byzantina: PG 157, 1010), he was part of the entourage of Emperor Giovanni VII Paleologo at the Council of Florence (1437–39). Perhaps it was from this period that his full adherence to the Roman Church dates; we have irrefutable testimony to it in a letter addressed to Pope Nicolò V in 1448, published by S. Lampros (Ἀρχιγραμμύλας, Athens 1910, pp. 136–37).
Like many of his Greek contemporaries, Giovanni led a very active life. Returning to the East after the Council of Florence, he came back to Italy, to Padua, where he studied and taught at the same time for three years (1441–44); he taught in Constantinople between 1444 and 1452; he made a brief stay in Rome in 1448 and, without doubt on that occasion, composed his short Treatise on the Procession of the Holy Spirit (cf. L. Allatius, Graeciae orthodoxae script., I, Rome 1652, pp. 400–18 and PG 158, 992–1008). After the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, between 1453 and 1457, he traveled through Greece, Italy, France, and also England. Finally, in 1457, he was appointed professor of philosophy at the Florentine Studium, where he translated the works of Aristotle into Latin and commented on them. He was careful not to involve himself too directly in the dispute between Platonists and Aristotelians, and praised the two great Greek philosophers equally. In 1471 he left Florence for Rome, certainly counting on the favor of his former fellow student at Padua, Francesco della Rovere, who would later be elected pope under the name of Sisto IV. The Pope gave him the warmest welcome, but did not make either him or his Roman pupils wealthy. The death of Bessarione (1472) was a disaster for him; he wished to return to Florence, but the Florentines preferred Calcondila to him. Nevertheless, in 1477, he returned to the Florentine Studium for four years (1477–81), alongside Calcondila. In 1481 he left Florence once again for Rome, where he died a few years later, almost in poverty (cf. G. Mercati, Minuzie, in Bessarione, 24 (1910), pp. 145–46).
A. was above all a professor and wrote little: in addition to the short treatise mentioned above, he left: 1) Latin translations of most of Aristotle’s works, which went through numerous editions; the translation of Porphyry’s Isagoge and that of St. Basil’s Hexaemeron, likewise published several times; 2) various oratorical writings, recently published by S. Lampros (op. cit., pp. 1–67, 129–41); 3) four short treatises, the first on various questions, the second on rhetorical exercises, the third on the forms of syllogism, and the fourth on dialectic; published by Lampros (op. cit., pp. 142–86), except for the last,
As for his personality, his enemies described him as fond of good food and made him die of an indigestion caused by lemons. These judgments should be treated with caution, as should the hyperbolic praises bestowed on him by his admirers. His friend Filelfo tells us of his bizarre and fickle character; this is sufficiently attested by the vicissitudes of his life.